OUR STORY

Angela Liguori’s earliest memories are of the busy hands of her mother, a dressmaker, the rhythmic hum of her sewing machine, and the luminous dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica, so big that it seemed to fill the windows of her family’s apartment in Rome.

From her mother, Angela absorbed a love of the tactile, an eye for beauty, and an attention to the detail of skilled craftsmanship. After receiving a gift of exquisite stationery, her particular love of beautiful paper and paper objects was born. As a teenager, she taught herself to make hand-marbled paper on her parents’ balcony, developing an individual style which she perfected over the ensuing years. She first apprenticed in the book arts in a studio in Bologna, where she learned the traditional style of bookbinding while completing a university degree in Renaissance Art History.

A leap of faith brought her to the United States in 1994, where she continued to pursue her love of time-honored paper, printing, and bookbinding techniques, learning as much as she could from established paper, letterpress, and book artists across the country. Angela worked at Minneapolis-based Lunalux, one of the first design studios to revive the art of letterpress in the United States; and at Cave Paper, a mill dedicated to the production of high-quality, handmade paper. She was artist-in-residence at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and also studied and worked at The University of Iowa Center for the Book and at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. Eventually, she interwove her passion for paper and design with her own unique vision to found Studio Carta.

In 2004, encouraged by retailers who frequently remarked upon the quality of her materials, Angela began importing a line of vibrantly-colored, 100-percent cotton Italian ribbon. Today, she works closely with manufacturers in Italy to bring her own distinctive, custom-ordered ribbon and desk accessories to customers in the United States and abroad. Studio Carta, is the exclusive importer and the only U.S. source for these high-quality ribbons, which have been produced using the same materials and methods since the nineteenth century.

Angela’s work has received national and international recognition. Today, from her light-filled studio in Brookline, Massachusetts, she designs, creates, markets, and distributes her products to specialty stores worldwide through her brand Studio Carta.